Boston writer Mark Phinney’s Fat is takes an unflinching look at the mental and physical burdens associated with being overweight.

Boston writer Mark Phinney’s Fat opens with a disturbingly honest scene that dramatically shows just how physically difficult it is for naked, 300-plus-pound Ken (Mel Rodriguez of Panic Room and The Watch), to even get out of bed.

For the next 85 minutes we watch Ken face his food demons, eating fast food on the sly and dealing with shame while struggling to manage physical and mental health problems amid rising anger, frustration and paranoia. He half-heartedly tries to overcome the obstacles he’s put in place that all but guarantee he remains fat and miserable.

“I have a food addiction; that’s at the heart of the movie,” said 41-year-old Phinney just ahead of coming to Toronto to premiere Fat, his first feature film, on Sept. 7. The movie screens a final time Sept. 13 at the Lightbox.

Rodriguez doesn’t hold back in how he reveals both his body and the most intimate details of Ken’s life.

It’s not until Ken meets more size-accepting Audrey (Ashley Lauren), who is happy how she is but is also contemplating weight-loss surgery, that he thinks he might have finally found a good reason to change his life.

“We’ve gone through the same issues,” said Phinney of his friend Rodriguez, who he met in L.A. 12 years ago. When he offered Rodriguez the part, the actor drove from Los Angeles to Boston with his fiancée, stopping long enough in Ohio to get married along the way.

“We have a lot of the same demons,” said Phinney.

Phinney, an actor and comic, has written extensively about his problems with being overweight.

“I was in L.A. for a long time, starting to be a writer and I was getting unhealthy physically, emotionally,” said Phinney. “I started writing essays about food and weight and working toward a book. I thought f--- it, I’m just going to write this honestly and not pull any punches and write the absolute truth about my life and what it’s done to me and what I’ve gone through.”

The film was made for $4,000, using a combination of help from friends (including an impressive soundtrack by Boston indie musicians) Kickstarter and credit cards. It comes to Toronto with the support of TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey, who included it on his Mission List of 15 as-yet undiscovered films at the festival — North American movies without distribution deals that deserve a look.

“I wanted to do something that was real about (obesity),” said Phinney, discounting the current spate of reality TV shows and comedies that focus on the overweight. “It gets too silly and too exploited. This is the darker version. This is what you really go through.”

In one scene, best friend Terry (Jason Dugre) tries to talk to an increasingly angry Ken about his body odour. Ken, humiliated and angry, finally admits his size prevents him from properly cleaning himself. Quietly, Terry offers to help.

“This is the mentality that you take on; it affects you emotionally and mentally and that’s the core of the disease,” observed Phinney.

Fat is one of three films at TIFF dealing with weight issues. The second is Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Hope (the final chapter in his trilogy with Paradise: Faith and Paradise: Love), about an overweight teenage girl sent to an Austrian fat camp where she develops a crush on the 40-year-old staff doctor with tragic consequences.

Paraiso (Paradise) is Mexican director Mariana Chenillo’s dramedy about an overweight couple who discover to their embarrassment that their size is suddenly an issue when they move from the suburbs to the city. They embark on a plan to try to shed pounds together.

Obesity is an interesting theme for TIFF, with these three films screening in the midst of the red carpet-focused, thin-is-in celebrity watching that is also a big part of the film festival.

Phinney said after living in L.A., where he had a ringside seat on a body-conscious culture, he’s much more content with who is now that he’s back in Boston and surrounded by friends, although he is still “struggling with my weight.”

He said Fat has some universal message, especially in our skinny-obsessed times.

“I hope people can connect to it,” he said.

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